More and more intelligent devices are used in modern homes, and it becomes reality to construct a home network among the devices in a wireless or wired manner. A user can release an instruction to the devices in the network to complete a task assigned by the user.
In such a network, different devices have different device functions. For example, an intelligent robot has functions that a smart phone does not have, and a refrigerator has a refrigeration function while a microwave oven does not. In addition, devices with similar functions have different device features, for example, a smart phone and a personal computer (PC) have different computation processing capacities, and a smart TV and a tablet computer have different screen sizes and different resolution, and support different file formats. In this case, how to make full use of the functions and features of the devices in the home network and use the most appropriate device to execute the user instruction so as to provide best user experience for users becomes an issue worth considering.
Using multimedia playback as an example, Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) has become an option to play multimedia, in which household appliances are connected to the same router in access manners such as wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) and local area network (LAN) to form a LAN, and devices in the LAN can function as a multimedia playback controller. However, the DLNA mainly focuses on issues such as interconnection between devices, file format conversion, and bit rate conversion, and does not focus on user requirement-based device selection; moreover, the DLNA only applies to the multimedia playback device network, and cannot be adapted to a home network environment consisting of multiple functional devices.